Streaming Event: Jules Verne Adaption

HEAR YE, HEAR YE...

Each weekend, Saturday and Sunday only, you'll be able to see one of legendary productions of the famous marionette company Carlo Colla & Figli of Milan. This weekend, "From the Earth to the Moon", after the novel by Jules Verne, written in 1865, with music from Jacques Offenbach's operetta "Le Voyage dans la lune". Carlo Colla's first marionette production of this show was in 1898.

Only today Saturday 23 and Sunday 24 May will be online "From Earth to the Moon", by the Fondazione Carlo Colla & Figli, which comes from Jules Verne's novel of 1865.

In 1875 composer Jacques Offenbach composed the operetta "Le Voyage dans la Moon" which the show was inspired.

In 1898 Charles II Colla put hand to the lyrics to create a version suitable for puppet representation. The Company worked on making puppets, hand scolding them and making their clothes. The sets were commissioned by Antonio Rovescalli, to be integrated by Ugo Bellio, Achilles Lualdi, scenographers of the Teatro alla Scala, in the early 900. s.

A work of artisan effort that led to the show "From Earth to the Moon", with puppets impersonating Terrestrials and Lunari, achieving a great success.

In 1993 a new version of the show was presented at the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, last represented at Piccolo Teatro Grassi at the end of December 2019.

May Fayre Memories Documentary

For 45 years Maggie Pinhorn and Alternative Arts have organised the Covent Garden May Fayre and Puppet Festival. In this video Punch and Judy professors, puppeteers, entertainers and puppet builders discuss what makes the day so magical, why people travel from across the globe to attend, and thank Maggie for her unparalleled contribution to British puppetry.

Beverley Puppet (Online) Festival: Back to Nature

The award-winning Beverley Puppet Festival usually fills the streets with excited onlookers. Giant creatures roam around Toll Gavel, Butcher Row and the Flemingate Centre; tiny, magical worlds are revealed to unsuspecting audiences in the Friary Gardens and indoor shows for all ages from 0-103 take place at The Friary, East Riding Theatre, Beverley Masonic Hall and Toll Gavel Church Hall.

The Covid-19 pandemic could have caused cancelling this year's festival; however, it was decided instead to go online. This is a new adventure for the festival team and one that now spans two months instead of just one weekend!

Anna Ingleby and Kerrin Tatman, Founder & Co-Artistic Director / Co-Artistic Director respectively, share:

"The emphasis is on what can be done at home, not on filming finished performances which we would prefer to see live. Three artists’ videos per week have been commissioned, to start appearing from May 18th – July 12th to inspire and invite people of all ages to participate in a diverse range of puppetry-related activities that can be completed at home."

This year's festival theme is BACK TO NATURE to which the  artists will each bring their own unique interpretation and audiences are encouraged to do the same. The original stimulus for this theme is the current climate change crisis. Unless nature is respected, important ecosystems which are needed to support human survival will collapse.

Sounds pretty exciting.  MORE innovative ONLINE solutions to physical world limitations...

Student Production: Shakespeare Film Adaptation

Anglia Ruskin University's Film & Television program students created this toy theatre trailer recently. They shared with me that, "...We are going to release a very different version very soon!"

I look forward to it!

Article: Toy Theatre Thrives Online During Quarantine

Great Small Works, a New York-based performance collective, recently organized the first virtual Toy Theatre Festival, providing an online platform for international artists who responded to an open call. 

And boy, did they respond!  In a matter of just days - sometimes hours - performers from around the world stepped up to volunteer performances in the time of our mutual pandemic quarantines.

John Bell (Great Small Works) hosts the festival with two alternating puppets designed by Isaac Bell. 

The result has been magical!  The first two evenings were last month, and the next two are later this week and early next week.  I invite you to come watch, to join in, LIVE, as amazing small stage productions are streamed out to the world...

Isolating Together: Virtual Toy Theater Festival II

Pollock’s Easter Instagram Exhibition

Benjamin Pollock's Toyshop will be hosting an Easter Instagram Exhibition, posted over the weekend starting at 3:00pm (GMT) Friday 10th April on Instagram @benjamin_pollocks_toyshop

The full exhibition will be posted on Facebook on Easter Monday 13th April 

Facebook.com/BenjaminPollocksToyshop

And will also be posted to the Benjamin Pollock’s Toyshop website.

Toy Theatre & Marionettes in Television

Isolating Together: Virtual Toy Theater Festival

COMING TO A PERSONAL SCREEN NEAR YOU!

*** I s o l a t i n g    T o g e t h e r  ***

Great Small Works' Online Toy Theater Festival

Day 1: Thursday, April 2, 2020 @ 7:30 - 9:00pm EDT
Day 2: Friday, April 3, 2020 @ 7:30 - 9:00pm EDT

Toy Theater practitioners from around the world will offer original (very) short shows. From the intimacy of the Victorian parlor to the intimacy of your personal viewing device, puppeteers transform the traditional form to reach out during these days of separation.

Some of the lineup of performers:
Dirk and Barbara Reimers, Papiertheater Polidor (Germany)
Modern Times Theater (East Hardwick, VT)
Great Small Works/Stephen Kaplin (Jackson Heights, NY)
Dan Van Allen (Baltimore, MD)
Dan Hurlin (NYC and Hawley, PA)
Ira Karp and Peter Schumann (Glover, VT)
Katherine Fahey (Baltimore, MD)
Katya Popova (Boston, MA)
Eli Nixon and Ida Marcus (Providence, RI)
Lindsay McCaw (Detroit, MI)
Tianding He, Yiru Chen, Ge Gao, An Hua (NY, NJ and Shanghai)
Laurie McCants (Bloomsburg, PA)
Amelia Castillo (Santiago, Chile, via Glover, VT)
Isabel Bazan and Mauricio Martinez (Mexico City)
Joshua Krugman (Glover, VT)
Kate Brehm (Brooklyn, NY)
Birthe Thiel, Theatre Mont d'Hiver (Germany)
Miss Pussycat and Quintron (New Orleans, LA)
Alissa Hunnicutt (North Hollywood, CA)
Michael and Valerie Nelson (Vallejo, CA)......and many, many more!

The Shackleford Project: Climate Change as Drama

"An entrancing production. For sheer power to haunt the imagination…it’s hard to picture anything surpassing 69°S.” - The Boston Globe

Phantom Limb: 69˚S. from EMPAC @ Rensselaer on Vimeo.

“Exquisitely rendered….beautifully constructed.”
– Los Angeles Times 

"A remarkable achievement of multimedia artistry, the spellbinding 69ºS. is like nothing you've ever seen before.”
– Backstage 

“Imagine the laboratory of a Victorian-age mad genius, and you’d probably come up with something like the Tribeca apartment of…Erik Sanko.”
– Village Voice

Phantom Limb Company’s 69 Degrees South may be  first production staged at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival to require a sojourn in Antarctica to make aural recordings. The company’s principals, set designer Jessica Grindstaff and puppeteer Erik Sanko, received a National Science Foundation Artists and Writers grant to capture the sounds of ice cracking, wind shearing, and feet trudging through the snow—all part of their layered spectacle opening April 28 2020, running through May 3rd.

But 69 Degrees South—which chronicles Ernest Shackleton’s almost doomed 1914 Antarctic expedition—is no National Geographic special: It includes puppets and live dancers, 28-foot-tall moving iceberg sculptures, NASA satellite imagery, and a minimalist score by the Kronos Quartet, along with Sanko’s legendary downtown noise-rock band Skeleton Key creating its own rather maximalist cacophony. “We’re big fans of letting images evoke meaning,” says Grindstaff, who, along with Sanko, hopes to make one of history’s greatest adventures resonate deeply—and wordlessly—for a contemporary audience.

Sock Monkey Sneak Peek

Popovy Sisters: Dolls by Hand

Punch & Judy Man Documentary Short

AutomataCON 2020

Magnetic Toy Theatre

View this post on Instagram

Just practising on #toytheatres with new #magnetics system to make figures #dance in $Sugg&Davidsons new Theatre based on Music Room at #brightonpavilion before packing it up to send to our lovely client in #mumbai

A post shared by Sugg&Davidson (@philipalexandersugg) on Jun 1, 2018 at 11:24am PDT

Lost & Found: Tinkering with Intent

Take a peek into Blair's bizarre and beautiful world. In a remote corner of New Zealand's South Island, tucked away among the last remaining tracts of native forest, lies a little-known place of wonder. It is the life's work and extraordinary creation of inventor, artist and self-confessed tinkerer, Blair Somerville.

For over twenty years Blair has single-handedly owned, operated and ceaselessly expanded the Lost Gypsy Gallery, his wonderland of homegrown wizardry and a playground for kids and adults alike. Using only recycled materials, Blair takes DIY to artistic extremes. His creations are ingenious, interactive, and often hilariously impractical. They take many shapes and forms and share an uncanny ability to amaze, entertain and inspire.


Art and entertainment don't need to be expensive. Sometimes the most fascinating and wonderful things come from the most peculiar places.

Blair Somerville lives in the remote town of Papatowai, on the South Island of New Zealand. He uses found materials and other curious objects which he re-purposes into magical moving artworks.

Blair realized early on that he didn't need a lot to live, and that money and material possessions were not important. Instead he has chosen to value happiness, creativity, and well-being.
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If you'd like to visit Blair, please note that he is open summers only, November - April, 10am to 5pm. Closed Wednesdays

Old-Time "Moving Pictures"

A listing of 16 different late 19th-century "Boy's Own Panoramas" for home entertainment, from H. G. Clarke and Co. in London. These 19th-century crankies include moving panoramas about John Gilpin, Dick Turpin, Punchinello, Punch and Judy, and views of the Thames embankment, the Oxford and Cambridge boat race, and a state procession with Queen Victoria. From the back of a racist galanty (shadow figure) show script inspired by Christy's Minstrels (an American blackface minstrel group which toured in England from 1857 to the turn of the century). Thanks Matthew Isaac Cohen for sharing this source.

Pontine Theatre Review: Storytelling at its Best

Review: Pontine Theatre’s ‘A New England Christmas’
By Jeanné McCartin
Posted Dec 2, 2019 at 9:27 AM

Pontine Theatre’s “A New England Christmas” is a brimming cup of holiday magic and cheer. Two people on a largely blank stage act out two intriguing short stories with minimal props in an easy, designed manner that transfixes their listeners. It’s rare so little offers so much.

This year, co-Artistic Directors and the company’s sole actors Marguerite Mathews and Greg Gathers adapted two short stories for their holiday fare: “A Neighbor’s Landmark,” by Sarah Orne Jewett, and “A Child’s Christmas in Wales,” by Dylan Thomas.

The most outstanding aspect of Mathews and Gathers work is its deliberateness. Every move is designed for effect, every gesticulation is poignant and graceful. Every prop, toy element and sound used is calculated for effect. They are masters of their art. 

They begin each piece with an informal setup that contains a bit of information about the author, their style, and the origin of the selection. 

The stage backdrop is a black curtain. The props are a small table, set a few feet before another, where the story’s backdrops are placed. Beneath both, hidden away, is a collection of small toy theater pieces and a handful of props. 

That’s it, a few visuals, two people and a lot of talent that bring a pair of entirely different stories to life. 

“Landmark,” set in Maine, is about a struggle to preserve two majestic, old pine trees. The trees’ owner is offered a tempting price for their lumber and leans toward felling them. His decision divides his family and sets his neighbors against him. In the synopsis, not so interesting, in the hands of Pontine, the tale very much is. 

The piece is blissfully colored by the rich language and dialogue of Orne Jewett, who had an astute ear for Down Maine dialect. The performers’ delivery demonstrates an equally canny ear. The sound alone is captivating. Coupled with Mathews and Gathers usual flawless performance, it’s simply mesmerizing. 

The structure of the piece is like a well-arranged musician’s set. Alone on stage with few props, they keep it interesting with their usual use of toy theater characters, mixed with performances by the actors without their aid, and the marriage of action between both. 

One of the funniest moments is when the two “row the boat.” It’s most poignant - at a suspenseful juncture - has the pair turning pages of an over-sized book, advancing the story in silence through its illustrations. 

“Child in Wales” is equally captivating. It’s a sweet, humorous story, told with fewer props still, but is no less fascinating for it. This one offers even more of the picturesque movement of the two performers, who take you back to childhood and Christmas through the eyes of a child. 

Pontine’s “A New England Christmas”  is storytelling at its best. It’s a gentle, bewitching hour and a half, offering something different for the holiday. This is definitely worth your precious, discretionary time.
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WHERE & WHEN:
Pontine Theatre
November 29 - December 8, 2019
Fridays 7pm, Saturdays 3pm, Sundays 2pm

David in the Dark

David Worobec performing at King Friday’s Dungeon Puppet Slam,
a scene from "Sweeney Todd" (October 2018 in Portland, Maine...)

The Mushroom Hunters